The following was written by Lanah Burkhardt, an intern for Convention of States.According to Pew Research Center, 54 percent of teenagers confess they spend too much time on social media. An unimaginable amount of time. And that does not factor in time on the internet, playing video games, or watching TV.But when did young people become so idle? When did it become so normal for young people to waste away their lives addicted to meaningless entertainment?When Andrew Jackson was 13, he volunteered to fight in the American Revolutionary War. By 14 years old, he was an orphan with little education. He later became the President of the United States.By three years of age, C.S. Lewis was reading. At age five, he began writing fantasy stories. He later became the author of over 40 books, including The Chronicles of Narnia.Walt Disney discovered his love of art at a young age. He dropped out of school at 16 to join the army and later started an animation business with his brother, Roy. Now, we all know him for his theme parks, characters, and classic movies.These examples prove that young people can accomplish great things, and they don’t have to wait.So when did our nation become slothful? SEE ALSO: Young People Are Hungry for Meaning – Our Culture Robs Them of It The original American Dream was to wake up before dawn, work hard until sunset, and then come back home. Men and women did something bigger than themselves to better the future. They were not handed things, they had to make opportunities. They had to work, whether they wanted to or not. Our great-grandparents did not pave a way for us to lay in bed and scroll from video to video, filling our minds with who knows what.I truly believe teenagers aspire to be more… more than just teenagers. Yet they haven’t had the opportunity fall into their laps. Laziness is cancer, and it’s spreading like a plague. The average time Americans spend on their phones a day is 5.4 hours. The average time watching TV is an average of two hours, 48 minutes a day. Lastly, the average time men and women spend on their computers is about 30 minutes a day. That’s the average… daily.When are we going to learn that social media, TV, video games, and the internet as a whole are proponents of depression, anxiety, meaninglessness, and a gaping estrangement from God? Social media temporarily feeds contentment over and over. But we are becoming a soulless people as it sucks the life out of us. Today, people have felt more depressed than ever; it stems from social media, yet people put their blinders on. This is because they do not want to believe what is giving them temporary happiness is also digging them into a dark hole of loneliness. America is destroying itself from the inside out because people, not only teenagers, are asleep. We need to wake our nation up. Lanah Burkhardt is an intern for Convention of States.
